This is a collection of news about border issues, particularly those seen from Arizona and regarding the right to keep and bear arms. Sources often include Mexican media. It's often interesting to see how different the view is from the south.
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Between now and the middle of the summer, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, says it will review some 300,000 pending deportation cases nationwide.

It will focus on deporting immigrants with criminal histories and closing the cases of students, veterans and other upstanding people unlawfully here but with close family and community ties.

In the first evidence of how the change is playing out, immigration officials are dropping an estimated 10 percent to 15 percent of the deportation cases on the dockets in Denver, as part of a pilot project to see how the new policy would work.

Authorities are also beginning to administratively close some San Francisco Bay Area cases, usually after the immigrant's lawyer makes a request.

"It's happening every day, in all places around the country," said ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez.

The change comes as the immigration debate is likely to play a role in the presidential race. While Latinos have expressed frustration at President Obama's record number of deportations, Republicans say the administration is not doing enough and that the new policy undermines congressional authority.

The Obama administration has argued that its new approach, first announced in a June memo, is a smarter way of enforcing immigration laws. The government has the funding to deport 400,000 people a year, and nearly reached that record last year, but trying to arrest and expel the country's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants would be costly and nearly impossible.

Before detaining or deporting an illegal immigrant, federal agents are now supposed to evaluate if the person is a priority, such as a criminal. Federal immigration lawyers are supposed to begin culling low-priority deportations from the thousands of backlogged cases and asking judges to close them. Administrative closure of a deportation case is not a path to citizenship, but some whose cases are closed will be able to get work permits.

Immigration officers always had discretionary power to grant reprieves based on special circumstances, said Camiel Becker, a San Francisco lawyer who attended the briefing by the region's top ICE lawyer and field director. But never before has ICE been instructed to use its discretion so broadly.